COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24255, 25 March 1940, Page 8

COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA

ro THE EDITOR Sir—ln the Daily Times on March 23 your correspondent, Mr A. B. Powell, begins his letter with a defence of freedom of discussion and tells us that we are now experiencing “perhaps the most vicious attack on that liberty which has ever occurred outside the openly Fascist States of Italy and Germany.” He also assures us that it is the minority opinion that needs special encouragement because it is certain to embody truths which the prevailing ideas lack. So far I think most people will agree with him, and all those who value individual freedom should use every democratic means in their power to preserve freedom of speech and discussion. But when your correspondent tells us that the aims of Communism re the highest for which man can strive, the universal brotherhood and co-operation of men and nations, and then brings forward Soviet Russia as an example and working model of this universal brotherhood and co-operation he rather bankrupts both his logic and his reason Permit me. Sir. to ask a few questions:— 1. Is there freedom of speech or discussion in Russia? What happens to those who publicly criticise the Government and its administration? 2. Can Mr Powell disprove < that the Russian people are kept in ignorance of world events and that the news they do get from the press and radio is definitely and absolutely controlled by the Government? 3. Is Mr Powell serious when he states that Soviet Russia “ is the only Power which has so far struck an effective blow at Hitler ” ? 4. Is the Soviet Government’s alliance with Nazi Germany another step toward the universal brotherhood of men and nations and the realisation of individual freedom? 5. Is the unprovoked attack by overwhelming numbers upon a small and inoffensive nation like Finland a practical demonstration of the Communistic conception and ideal of the brotherhood of men and nations? 6. Can Mr Powell show, or refer .0 any newspaper or magazine published within the Soviet Union in, say. the last 18-or 20 years, wherein the Soviet Union Government or its administration is criticised? 7. As a gentleman who relies so much upon logic and upon knowledge as contrasted with ignorance, would Mr Powell admit that Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Soviet Russia are all pyramidal dictatorships wherein the masses of the people, the proletariat, form the base and bear the burden, the bureaucracy forms the upsloping sides which culminate at the apex in a personal dictator, and that the individual as such is exploited and enslaved? In New Zealand a man may be fined or even imprisoned for a month or more if he disturbs the peace or is convicted of subversive, seditious, or treasonable utterances; that is undei emergency war regulations. Hov would the same man fare in Soviet Russia? Yes, Mr Powell, I agree with you that in Russia he would be neither fined nor imprisoned for a month. Oh, no. He would be liquidated!—l am, etc., Jj* Dunedin, Mar. 24.

TO THE EDITOR Sir, —Your correspondent A. B. Powell refers to J. T. Mill’s Essay on Liberty and says we are experiencing to-day what is perhaps the most vicious attack on that liberty which has ever occurred outside the openly Fascist States of Italy and Germany. That statement is quite true, for Stalin signed a pact with Hitler to carve up Europe under dictatorship control. Your Industrial Notes of March 23 contained an extract from the London Labour daily, the Daily Herald, to this effect: “ Socialists in Soviet-occupied Poland, regardless of whether they are Poles Ukrainians, or Jews, are the most ruthlessly persecuted class of people,” The notes contain also an extract from a British Labour Party pamphlet, showing the depths of feeling that the Russian invasion has stirred in the Finnish Labour Movement. Thus the Finnish trade unions have declared: “We have no choice other than to fight. And this the

whole Finnish nation is doing, assured of its right to live as an independent nation whose every class of society has the possibility of taking part in the conduct of common affairs_ within the framework o£ a democratic constitution.” What a groundless assertion is ' is that a Finnish defeat would mean liberation for Finland, 'when the Communist International paper argued last July that the Finnish eleqtions “ prove that the people of Finland are for freedom and democracy and against Fascism.” Curran, the Irish orator, in his speech cn Liberty, says: “I speak in the spirit of British law, which makes .liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, British soil, which proclaims even to the stranger and sojourner the moment he puts his foot on British soil that the ground on which he treads is holy and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation.”—l am, etc., Democrat. Dunedin. March 24.